Now Australia has a poor health care system?

[Savannahmann]

I ask this because during one of the many discussions here as I pointed out that isolation and quarantines are good policy that we were not using, I was informed that the nations who are implementing a ban or other travel restrictions were ones with poor health care systems.

Yet, Australia has just implemented a travel ban.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced "strong controls" on arrivals from West African countries affected by cases of the deadly disease.

Telling Australia's parliament during a question time session Monday that his ministry was currently "not processing any application from these (Ebola) affected countries," he said that the government was also suspending its humanitarian program.

Of course, the "medical experts" continue to sing their song about how tough it is to get the disease. While at the same time the WHO says that the disease could reach the point where 10,000 a week get it.

The announcement came as a "surprise," the Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Brian Owler told CNN, who said that the chance of the disease entering the country through a migrant from the region was very low.

I'd hate to think that Australia had the right idea while we eschew the basic protections for the population that have worked for thousands of years. Oh well, we'll just pat ourselves on the treatment instead of working towards the prevention.

[sharp_stick]

1. I really wish that people would make an

attempt to understand Ebola before singing the praises of a piece of shit like Tony Abbott on a site like DU.

The bleating bullshit is overwhelming, it's not even worth the effort anymore.

[etherealtruth]

2. (Borrowing a word from religion) AMEN! n/t

[Demit]

3. Medical professionals are seeing straight through the politicians.

Here's more from your 2nd link:

'Concerns are being raised that the Australian response is largely engineered to create political capital, particularly given the country's well-documented hard line on immigration.

"There have been people here in Australia that have been asking for this kind of approach and I think the main drive is political," Owler said. "Of course it will always be dressed up as a solution to keeping Australians safe but in actual fact the people who are coming from West Africa, a number of them are coming on humanitarian grounds so there are concerns about why their visas are being denied, and for what period of time they'll be denied for."

The nonprofit Medicines Sans Frontiers, also known as Doctors Without Borders, echoed the sentiment, saying that "developed countries' prevention strategies ... seem to have more political than medical implications."'


Australian politicians can be just as craven as ours.

[badtoworse]

4. If 10,000 people a week can get the disease in West Africa,...

...why can't the same thing happen here? If you can identify and monitor the people who have had contact with an affected individual, you can keep the risks low. Once you lose that ability (as in the case of the disease being spread in a mass transit system), all bets are off. The health care system could easily become overwhelmed to the point where monitoring and isolation are no longer possible. The chances of this happening are not zero and Australians recognize that.

[treestar]

6. It is harder to spread here or in another first world country

Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2021, 07:46 PM - Edit history (3)

I was reading that in West Africa, in rural areas, soap and water may not even be available. Or the funeral rites that require contact with the body.

[badtoworse]

10. Have you ever ridden on a NYC 4 or 5 train during rush hour?

NYC has dozens of subway lines that are similar. People are literally packed into the subway cars like sardines and at any given time, you are in physical contact with 3 or 4 people. People are getting on and off the subway at every stop, so those 3 or 4 people are constantly changing. Every day, hundred of thousands (millions?) of people get to work that way in New York.

The risk of one person passing the disease to another may be low on a one-off basis, but factoring in the sheer number of people who could be potentially exposed by a few infectious persons in the subway system, the risks are likely to be substantially higher. Beyond that, you would have no way to know who was potentially exposed and monitor them. You would only know the disease had been passed on when the affected people became symptomatic and you wouldn't know whom they had potentially infected. In other words, you'd have lost control of the situation.

I've never been to Australia, but I imagine Sydney has a mass transit system similar to NYC's. I haven't heard health care professionals address the above scenario and I doubt they can. Voluntary self-monitoring sounds great, but does that guarantee that mistakes won't happen? In a densely populated urban environment, the risks of that happening, even if small, are too high to take.

[Crunchy Frog]

8. Try learning something about epidemiology

and the differencees between the social conditions in this country and West Africa.

The chances of a mass epidemic happening here pretty much are zero.

[badtoworse]

11. See Post 10 and tell me why it can't happen.

[sharp_stick]

12. Ebola is highly infectious

but not highly contagious. By the time somebody is shedding virus on a subway train they would be prostrate and nearly in a coma, not riding a subway train.

Ebola begins it's infection in a few white blood cells, it replicates slowly and there are no symptoms. You would probably need to get a blood transfusion from this patient to risk disease at this stage.

About a week to 10 days after infection Ebola begins to replicate in the lymph nodes and a fever begins. Anybody monitoring for Ebola would be instructed to come in for isolation monitoring.

About a week later it has begun to replicate in the liver and this is when the infection rapidly takes the patient down. The fever spikes often over 102 to 103 degrees and the patients blood is now highly infectious and through his system. At this point the patient is pretty much immobile and not going anywhere without help. If the patient is going to recover quickly this is when supportive therapy will help and there will be no further expansion.

If the patient is in trouble the cells lining the blood vessels begin to become infected over the next days and and the patient begins to hemorrhage internally. Now is when you don't want to be anywhere near them, they are producing virus in vomit and diarrhea and bleeding on contact. They must be isolated and health care workers properly protected, unlike the nurses in Texas.

The Visa program is now more than just a way for people to travel, it's a major point of infection control. At the interview for the Visa in addition to the Immigration personnel there is now an epidemiologist from the W.H.O., Red Cross or now even the CDC taking background on the applicant to find out where they're from, what they've been doing and whether or not they know of any Ebola cases. These interviews serve the front line worker as a map of how to plan and place services. We need to stop Ebola where it is, if you want real problems just wait and see what happens if people in Liberia or Sierra Leone start to panic and flee to the rest of Africa. We'll have an illegal migration problem that will dwarf anything in recent memory.

There is no chance to ever get your chances of something down to zero, but one guarantee I'll make right now is that over the next six months there will be thousands of people in America, including hundreds of children dead from the flu, that's thousand and hundreds more than from Ebola.

[badtoworse]

13. The newest CDC guidelines are somewhat different

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025724666

The moderate and low risk scenarios are possible before the infected person is incapacitated. According CDC, transmission of the disease is possible in the early stages of the disease. When you dealing with millions of people regularly in close contact with each other, one in a million chances can and likely will happen.

BTW, nice summary of how the disease progresses.

[Crunchy Frog]

5. Suspending its humanitarian program?

That's pretty dickish.

At this point, Cuba looks like a much better country.

[bullwinkle428]

7. Any asshole ignoramus in charge of a "health care system" is perfectly

Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2021, 06:25 PM - Edit history (1)

capable of implementing poor policy decisions.

[gcomeau]

9. Do try to pay at least a little attention

Was the travel ban enacted because their lead health care officials asked for it? No it was not. It was enacted by politicians reacting to public panic.

For fuck's sake, you QUOTED THAT FACT YOURSELF.

So what the hell were you thinking trying to use this as an example of a country with a good health care system doing the travel ban you want? That good health care system, like every other competent health care system, recommended AGAINST FUCKING DOING IT. Because it's ineffective and counterproductive and stupid.

But don't let that stop you from waving your arms around and screaming for it to be done anyway because it will make you feel better. Clearly you know better than all the professionals. I mean what the hell does the CDC know about infectious diseases anyway right?